T.S. Sivagnanam, J.

Since the issue involved in all these Writ Appeals and Writ Petitions raises a common question, they are taken up for disposal together.

2. The facts leading to the filing of the Writ Appeals and Writ Petitions before this Court are stated as hereunder:

(a) The appellant is manufacturer of Portland Cement in their works situated at Dalmiapuram. The appellant is a consumer of electrical energy, which is supplied by Tamil Nadu Electricity Board. According to the appellant, due to acute power shortage, they were forced to go for captive power generating sets in order to maintain levels of production and to avoid shut down the appellant has installed 2 Nos. of 5000 KV and 2 Nos. of 2500 KVA Generating sets and those generating sets are running on Furnace Oil.

(b) It is stated that under the provisions of Tamil Nadu Electricity (Taxation on Consumption) Act 1962, a tax is imposed on the consumption of energy and Section 3 of the Act is the charging section. Section 3-A was inserted by Tamil Nadu Act 32 of 1991, by which the additional tax on consumption was fixed at 5% of the price. The proviso to sub-section 1 would exclude the power captively generated